Enigmatic Pilot_ A Tall Tale Too True - Kris Saknussemm [72]
Here another overlooked law of human nature and mass perception may have come into play. The more unexpected and unprecedented an occurrence, the more likely it is to slip into the realm of legend, which may be interpreted as a communal way of forgetting what actually happened.
Both of these factors were at work in St. Louis. And, as Lloyd would come to see, other hidden influences were at work as well. Had he not been advised that a war was being waged by secret alliances masked in the shadows of history and camouflaged in the chaos of the hour? Had not Schelling warned him that the capabilities involved were formidable in their reach?
If events could be orchestrated, could not their perception be manipulated, perhaps even eradicated? Personal reports and newspaper accounts of the lynching and burning of Francis McIntosh had diverged wildly and more than a few residents had clean forgotten their involvement, so in the end it was not surprising that those citizens of St. Louis who were watching on the day could not agree and many did not want to admit what they saw sailing toward the city—not on the river but in the sky. Though it came out of the heavens, it looked as if it came from hell. Or perhaps Chicago, Mulrooney thought as he watched from the crowd in astonishment, his good heart pounding and perspiration beading under his leghorn hat.
As Lloyd had predicted, if it had been just a balloon that drifted over the city people would have known how to respond. But it was ever so much more than a balloon that detached and exploded like a slow-falling star over the esplanade. What emerged was nothing like anything anyone had ever seen before. Imagine a swirled cage made of fishing net, bone-dry cane and broom straw, twined wig hair, umbrella spokes and wax, rippling with a patchwork of bandages and bed linen—with a puff of silken sail atop. The rising power of the balloon had lifted the surreal structure into the freshening breeze, where it was then driven forward by all the boiler-bursting speed that Lucky Cahill spurred his smoking steam barge to provide since lugging it out of its secluded mooring on the Illinois side.
Young Lloyd had named his creation the Miss Viola. Atop the domed roof of the courthouse, Hansel Snowden Brookmire squinted through a spyglass when he spotted it. Fragments of American flag crackled in the wind, mirrors glinted, feathers rained like snow—and a voice called out of the blue, “All Hail the Ambassadors from Mars!”
The voice was Lloyd’s, projected through a huge knitting mill cone used for winding yarn, but there were other voices that might have been heard—namely, the hysterical cluckings of Urim and Thummim. Lloyd’s initial plan had been to dress Mulrooney’s charges in stovepipe hats and swallowtail coats, as befitting their introduction to St. Louis society and the earth at large. But he had been unable to acquire togs in their size and so had been forced to improvise again, arriving at a solution that he felt was economical and more appropriate given their supposed otherworldly origin (not to mention the wind!). The brothers were now dressed in toga-like gowns made of ladies’ undergarments and equipped with tiny gold wands the boy had foraged out of a rubbish bin. Trembling hundreds of feet in the air inside a bird-delicate cell of spiral-arranged bladders stitched with bass line, linen, and scavenged wharfery—and now, hovering free of the barge with no balloon to support them—the twins were literally at the end of their tether.
It was pure adrenaline that kept Lloyd from taking more notice of their consternation—that and the sheer novelty of the view. The sight of the people and the horse carriages, the packing crates and the ship pipes, pony carts and rooftops! He could not believe that he was seeing it all just as he had imagined. He had done what he set out to do—to rise above the hordes and sweep all attention skyward! For a moment, it seemed to